CRUCIFYING KRISTOF: Racist consigned to the enemy camp!

Part 5—Denouncing the toast of the TED talks: In our view, Nicholas Kristof’s January 25 column is one of the strangest we’ve ever read.

Four days later, he wrote a follow-up column. It was quite strange too.

In his initial column, Kristof denounced the many “wealthy Americans” who would have denounced his late friend, Kevin Green, due to their “empathy gap.” As he started his follow-up column, the gentleman’s moral superiority was on full display once again.

In my last column, I wrote about a high school buddy, Kevin Green, a warm and helpful man who floundered in a tough job market, hurt his back and died at the age of 54. The column was a call for empathy for those who are struggling, but, predictably, scolds complained that Kevin’s problems were of his own making.

Grrrr.

So what do we know about empathy and how to nurture it?

In a column straight outta The Onion, Kristof proceeded to list some of the ways we might “increase empathy.” He never explained how this would help people in tough job markets.

How might we increase empathy? According to Kristof, research says that we should go out into nature more. We should look at images from space, preferably producing “feelings of awe.”

We should listen to “uplifting stories about sacrifice.” We should “think about suffering,” thus “activating the vagus nerve.”

We should “read literary fiction by the likes of Don DeLillo or Alice Munro—but not beach fiction or nonfiction.”

These are excellent tips, but they seem irrelevant to the questions raised by Kristof’s initial column. In that column, Kristof said his late friend’s terrible problems were largely caused by the absence of well-compensated working-class jobs.

By now, this problem has been identified by everyone on the planet. But this problem won’t be addressed if Kristof’s readers take more walks in the woods or think about suffering more.

And not only that! According to Kristof, the “empathy gap” is found among the rich, not among us, the elect. If we assume that this gap exists, it won’t be addressed if Kristof’s readers activate their vagus nerves.

Alas! In his pair of columns about his late friend, Kristof offered no ideas about ways to increase the supply of good working-class jobs. Beyond that, he offered no ideas about the ways to reach out to centrists and conservatives to build wider political coalitions in support of improving the social safety net.

He simply told us how we might increase empathy within our own enlightened tribe. We have no idea how this is supposed to address the problem which, he said, lay at the heart of Kevin Green’s life.

Beyond that, did you notice what Kristof did at the start of this follow-up column? That’s right! When he summarized his late friend’s life, he eliminated all the facts which might make perfectly decent people disapprove of his friend!

He then said “Grrrrr” in exasperation.

Alas! It seems some people had left comments with which Kristof didn’t agree—comments which may have noted the obvious problems lurking in the tragic story he originally told.

Look at Kristof’s shortened account of Kevin Green’s life! He drops the part of the story where Green’s brother says that Green didn’t fully commit to seeking a job. He also drops the part of the story where Green fails to pay child support for his twin sons, who end up failing in school and then going to jail.

In this follow-up column, Kristof drops the parts of the story which might make a sensible person disapprove of his friend. He then expresses exasperations about the lack of empathy found among The Other Tribe, the bad people whom he disdains.

He teaches us how to make ourselves finer, stroking our egos as he does. He toys with research in this column, as he sometimes does.

(We especially hate it when Kristof toys with research about public schools, as he has often done when criticizing our lazy public school teachers. But he toys with research fairly often, as is the habit of the swells who function as Toasts of the TED Talks.)

Here at THE HOWLER, we often say “Grrrr” ourselves! We do so when we read the sanctimonious columns of Kristof.

Quite routinely, Kristof strokes us on the pseudo-left, telling us we’re The Very Good People. He attacks the morals of The Others, who he casts as The Very Bad People—even when they object to a story which seems to involve some heinous parental misconduct.

Tribal con men have played these cards all through the annals of time. When Kristof does so in this case, he proposes no solutions to a major social problem like the lack of good working-class jobs. He just hardens the wedges which keep us from forming, or even from seeking, winning political coalitions involving our red and blue tribes, each of which is getting looted by The One Percent.

Increasingly, this is the way we tend to do politics here on the pseudo-left. We spend our time denouncing the morals of the people we need to form coalitions.

As in the Kevin Green column, it doesn’t even have to be clear that those on the right are actually wrong! We pleasure ourselves denouncing The Others in every way we can.

We especially seem to enjoy this practice when we get to scatter our R-bombs around. Amazingly, Kristof himself was denounced on this basis just as these columns appeared.

As always, we pseudo-liberals were killing the pig—but this time, the pig was Kristof himself! This is the way it went down:

To all appearances, the shooting of Rice involved the worst possible type of police work. In response to that front-page report, Kristof issued a tweet which was somewhat dumb, but then again not all that dumb:

“Activists perhaps should have focused less on Michael Brown, more on shooting of 12-yr-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland.”

Just for the record, Kristof is often somewhat dumb, even in his columns. Don’t let credentials mislead you!

It’s also true that people’s tweets may often tend to be dumb. Even our saints are restricted in what they can say in a tweet!

What made Kristof’s tweet perhaps a tiny bit dumb? Michael Brown was shot and killed several months before the shooting of Rice.

People thought police misconduct was involved in the shooting of Brown. There was no way to sit around waiting for a 12-year-old boy to get shot a few months later.

Protestors protested in real time. This made perfect sense.

In what way was Kristof's tweet not dumb? Duh! By now, many people had noted the fact that the shooting of Rice was less “complicated” than the shooting of Brown.

As matters turned out, it was somewhat hard to nail down the facts in the shooting of Brown. But the shooting of Rice was videotaped—and it resembled a drive-by shooting, so bad was the police work.

By the time of Kristof’s tweet, many people had noted that the facts about the shooting of Brown had been a bit hard to nail down. By way of contrast, the shooting of Rice was right there on videotape. On its face, it was a thoroughly ridiculous example of (fatally) bad work by the Cleveland police.

Should activists try to make sure that citizens see the videotape of that later shooting? Might that tape convince some people that police misconduct can be a real problem, in a way the shooting of Brown possibly hadn’t achieved?

Presumably, yes, that could happen! Presumably, everyone can understand what Kristof seems to have been saying in his disgraceful tweet.

Sorry! Kristof had broken the law of the tribe in that outrageous tweet! Because of this misconduct, he was quickly denounced as the worst kind of running dog.

He tried to respond and was savaged further (see below). By Monday morning, the crazy Joan Walsh was willing to type this assessment:

WALSH (1/26/15): To me, Kristof is not the enemy. He’s done great work on class, and occasionally on race. Of course he’s privileged and thus occasionally blinkered and befuddled when it comes to race, but someone who consistently tries to understand and communicate about racial injustice is an imperfect ally; a work in progress, not an enemy. People I respect may disagree.

Nicholas Kristof isn’t the enemy, Joan Walsh bravely cried. That said, people whom Walsh respects may disagree on that point!

Really? Who could possibly disagree about that? Who could possibly think that Nicholas Kristof is “an enemy” of progressives when it comes to matters of race?

What person could be crazy enough to brook so crazy a thought? To brook so crazy a thought because of one imperfect tweet?

To borrow from the great Maureen Dowd, Kristof is so scripted on race that’s he’s practically lactating. Only a few months ago, he published a series of five columns in the Times under this condescending headline: “When Whites Just Don’t Get It.”

In best Kristoffian fashion, he rattled off every standard liberal belief about race in the course of those five columns, all of which bore that condescending headline. He never let it cross his mind that someone could reasonably disagree with his outlook in some way.

To Kristof, disagreement could only mean that the “white person” in question “just didn’t get it.” If you don’t think what the great Kristof thinks, your soul gets kicked to the curb.

Kristof worked from this same framework in his columns about Kevin Green. To Kristof, The Others are very bad people who make him say Grrrr. This is true even if they disapprove of a parent who refuses to support his children, who then end up in jail!

Through a full five-column series, Kristof took the same all-knowing approach to matters of race. He recited every part of all our liberal scripts.

But now, because of one wayward tweet, Walsh was saying something truly crazy. She was saying that she respects people who think Kristof is “an enemy” on matters of race!

How dumb, how crazy, must somebody be to make so crazy a statement? How Stalinist must that person be? How devoted must a person be to pledging allegiance to every aspect of Tribal Dogma?

We can’t believe that Walsh is that dumb; we assume she was simply stroking the herd. For what it’s worth, she took the same approach the next day to the running dog Jonathan Chait, typing this nugget of ISIS-like wisdom:

“Like I said about Kristof Monday: I’m not prepared to dismiss Chait as hopeless, or put him in the enemy camp...”

Chait isn’t yet “in the enemy camp!” Although that day may come!

Question: How crazy must a progressive be to see Kristof in “the enemy camp” on matters of race? To flirt with that crazy language?

Back in the day, we progressives showed that we can easily be that crazy! Our Maoist and Stalinist factions helped create the atmosphere which led to the Ages of Nixon and Reagan. Now, you see a reinvented weirdo like Walsh pushing the same kind of script.

We assume that Walsh really isn’t that dumb. We assume she's just playing a game.

But that tribal game can do tons of harm. Sadly, we think Kristof was playing a version of that same game in his sanctimonious, know-it-all columns about his late friend.

Kristof has become quite famous stroking the liberal world’s privates. His columns are often quite dumb—and to our eye, they’re just getting dumber. That first one on Green was a beaut.

The Dumb has worked well for the pseudo-right. Can it really work well for progressives?

Running dog tries to escape: Chait had written a muddy piece about a practice or movement he calls “political correctness.”

We wouldn't use that term ourselves. We didn't think Chait did a very good job defining his basic complaint.

CHAIT (1/27/15): If a person who is accused of bias attempts to defend his intentions, he merely compounds his own guilt...If you are accused of bias, or “called out,” reflection and apology are the only acceptable response—to dispute a call-out only makes it worse. There is no allowance in p.c. culture for the possibility that the accusation may be erroneous.

To see our tribal mates killing the pig, you can just click here. Kristof had made a fatal mistake. He had tried to explain what he meant!

In this matter, Chait got it right. Every word the running dog said just made his thought crimes worse!

Sure, let's go out to nature and observe living beings, especially primates, and learn "empathy." Good thing I've got nothing scheduled for the next hour because I need all of it to stop laughing at this.

Beyond that, did you notice what Kristof did at the start of this follow-up column? That’s right! When he summarized his late friend’s life, he eliminated all the facts which might make perfectly decent people disapprove of his friend!

Living in a bubble of clueless, he mistakenly forgot there were people remaining who notice such things and don't define their decency by how hard they can try to not notice.

Grrrrrrrrrrr. Even though I preemptively called them out, some are still refusing to censor themselves and are still resisting our ignorant and repeatedly failed world view and approach. They are still thinking thoughts about Kevin and not feeling ashamed about it. Grrrrrrrrr

"Our Maoist and Stalinist factions helped create the atmosphere which led to the Ages of Nixon and Reagan."

As a conservative, it never fails to irk me that silly old self loathing liberals like Somerby can't even give us credit for our own success.They have to wallow in their own guilt to explain how they lost.

And disappearing AuH2O? Sorry SlobberBabyBobby. Barry Goldwater was more than just a loser to Landslide Lyndon. He was the General who inspired all the foot soldiers in the Reagan Revolution.

Ah, so Kristof's tweet about Brown and Rice, unlike his column on Kevin Green, was only "a tiny bit dumb" and only because of the time lag between the two killings by trigger-happy cops.

Dare I suggest other reasons that Kristof's tweet might be more than a "tiny bit dumb"?

1. He set up a false "either/or" dichotomy between the two killings. We can't care about both Rice and Brown. We can only care about one.

2. Kristof is saying only perfect victims like Rice deserve our "focus." A big, black kid who smokes pot and stole some cigarillos, then was gunned down in a hail of police bullets for jaywalking? Not nearly as deserving of our empathy.

3. "Activists" didn't initially focus on Michael Brown. The people of Ferguson got fed up with their police department and took to the streets.

4. "Activists" got involved and focused on the Brown killing only after those protesting citizens were met in the street by fully militarized, fully armed local police with military grade weapons, and it became national news.

Interesting. Somerby is quick to call Kristof a "scold" for his column on Kevin Green. But comes to his defense when Kristof scolds "activists" for not focusing on the correct dead black kid.

What Kristof was trying to say without saying it is that he agrees with other reasonable people who judged and scolded Michael Brown for being a thug and causing his own death. Even Saint Kristof sometimes thinks the "wrong" thoughts.

Nice try, but I refuse to discuss this any more with the racists who have found a new home here, where the host not only cavalierly dismisses every allegation of racism or sexism, but mocks those who bring them up.

He doesn't dismiss EVERY allegation. He objects to the ones that are off-base and thus undermine the seriousness of both racism and sexism. Someone who cannot tell the difference between a microaggression (that may or may not have been racial, like that event on the train) and an act of racism, treating both as equally heinous, will not be taken seriously when discussing either event.

"Our Maoist and Stalinist factions helped create the atmosphere which led to the Ages of Nixon and Reagan."

Funny, but most historians give a bigger part to the civil rights laws and the end of segregation than any "Maoist" or "Stalinist" factions within the liberal side of the spectrum. They called it the "Southern Strategy," hint, hint. That could be why Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 Presidential campaign with a state's rights speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, associated eternally with the murder of three civil rights workers and refusal of the Mississippi officials, exercising state's rights, to charge the alleged culprits with murder.

Or perhaps Bob is implicitly calling Martin Luther King and the entire leadership of the civil rights movement Maoist and Stalinist?

Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 Presidential campaign with a state's rights speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, associated eternally with the murder of three civil rights workers...

Nonsense. This is the kind of thing Bob decries -- finding any old excuse to accuse the other of racism. Plenty of locations have had something awful. And, Philadelphia, Miss. is not famous. BTW the movie Mississippi Burning, which made these murders better known, had not been made at the time that Reagan campaigned in Philadelphia.

Nobody needed "Mississippi Burning" to know the significance of Philadelphia,Mississippi, sixteen years after the murders -- or to see the messaging intent behind giving a states' rights speech there. You must be quite young..

ul -- in your estimation, Reagan was providing a covert message to racists. Yet, to the degree that Philadelphia was still remembered 16 years later, I suspect it was remembered by anti-racists. I doubt that the racists were interested in preserving the memory of an event that was a big embarassment to them.

The murders mean a lot to me, because one of the victims, James Schwerner, was the son of a teacher in the high school my wife and I had attended. My wife had taken a class from Mrs. Schwerner. But, to me, the murders suggested the entire state of Mississippi, not necessarily Philadelhpia or Neshoba County.

There were several hundred towns in the deep South larger than Philadelphia, MS. It was a small town with no particular history or attractions. In the course of his speech, Reagan used the words and advocated "states' rights." The previous Presidential candidate who had expressly spoken in favor of "states rights" was George Wallace, previously best known for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

If you think there was no message trying to appeal to Southern racists who hated what those bad Federal Government people had done to the South in forcing the end of institutionalized segregation, then you are implicitly saying Reagan's campaign people were incredibly stupid.

No particular history, that is, other the murders of civil rights workers in 1964, 16 years previously. In Southern historical time, in those days anyway, 16 years was roughly the same as the day before yesterday.

urban legend -- I didn't know any Southern racists in 1980, so I can't directly prove how many of them remembered the 1964 murders in Philadelphia, MS. I suspect you're in the same boat.

However, states rights is an issue that goes beyond racial issues. Far-sighted people in 1980 were worried that the expansion in federal powers would cause problems. By now, even the New York Times has begun to recognize some of the problems. See http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/opinion/sunday/the-best-way-to-address-campus-rape.html?_r=0

"You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

None of that reveals a motive of racism or appealing to racism for the sake of racism. It appears Atwater was discussing how a candidate who opposes policies designed to benefit one group over another can be sold successfully to other groups who will bear the cost of them.

That's right! Kristof has failed at the Somerby school of journalism, in which the solon manque repeats in his four follow-up columns the identical moral scolding he wrote in his first, adding nothing and ignoring in all the facts that undermine his dubious premise, which might make perfectly decent people believe The Howler is in desparate need of treatment for OCD!

The content of TED talks is not vetted. All you need to give one is money. It is a form of entertainment, not education, especially if the audience cannot tell the difference between solid info and B.S.

Jenner is an attention seeker because he is mentally ill and doesn't need surgery, he needs meds and therapy. His attention-seeking and the libs who sought attention to him because he was doing something batshit insane (sex "change") reportedly caused an accident that killed someone.

"You didn’t see Brian Williams‘ “Slow Jam the News” partner Jimmy Fallon making any jokes about the NBC Nightly News anchor’s newfound credibility issues on the Tonight Show last night. But former NBC late night host Conan O’Brien did not hesitate to do a bit in which he presented some other “exaggerations” Williams has made over the last few years."

“I don’t think this is the only time Brian Williams has tried to get in on someone else’s glory,” O’Brien remarked.

It hasn't been journalistically proven that "Howler" cicero is the same as "freeper" cicero. His link to former "friend of Bob" Josh Marshall's page certainly should raise doubts that cicero critics must consider in their responses.

The assorted Anonymous dailykosters rely on the Brian Williams standard of imaginary reporting. My chat name cicero may even predate the guy using my name on FP whom I have never heard of. I'm sure that cicero appreciates the advertising on TDH of his/her link by otiose liberals.

Bob Somerby is right about how strange Kristof's columns about Green were. I haven't seen anything worse than Kristof imagining what people might say about his dead friend since Bob Somerby imagined what Freedom Riders might have seen "sparking" in old Bull Connor. Of course Bull Connor has been dead a lot longer.

Howler readers have been led through a week of Kristof bashing, based on Kristof "imaging" a lack of empathy "others" would display if told about the life of his friend Kevin Green.

I did not notice any of Somerby's many comments reference a strange series of posts he himself wrote last December about "empathy." That too was triggered by a Kristof column.

It ended with Sombery imagining liberals lack empathy for the policebased on a letter to the editor Somerby described thusly:

"It isn’t that anything reader wrote was technically “wrong.” Still, we were struck by the lack of empathy on display in his letter, by his failure to engage with anything the Brooks column asked him to think about."

Somerby. like Kristof, lamented groups of people lacking empathy. Based on nothing specific anyone had said.

Brian Williams was happy to on record that Rush Limbaugh was a "great broadcaster" and Peggy Noonan should have won the Pulitzer for her work on Clinton. Yep, that's my kind of liberal. Ah, because we "take it!" The issue tends to become why we take "The Daily Howler...."